"October 28. 1819.
"I have to thank you for your letter, and your compliment to Don
Juan. I said nothing to you about it, understanding that it is a
sore subject with the moral reader, and has been the cause of a
great row; but I am glad you like it. I will say nothing about the
shipwreck, except that I hope you think it is as nautical and
technical as verse could admit in the octave measure.
"The poem has _not sold well_, so Murray says--'but the best
judges, &c. say, &c.' so says that worthy man. I have never seen it
in print. The third Canto is in advance about one hundred stanzas;
but the failure of the two first has weakened my _estro_, and it
will neither be so good as the two former, nor completed, unless I
get a little more _riscaldato_ in its behalf. I understand the
outcry was beyond every thing.--Pretty cant for people who read Tom
Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and
Dryden, and Pope--to say nothing of Little's Poems! Of course I
refer to the _morality_ of these works, and not to any pretension
of mine to compete with them in any thing but decency. I hope yours
is the Paris edition, and that you did not pay the London price. I
have seen neither except in the newspapers.
"Pray make my respects to Mrs. H., and take care of your little
boy. All my household have the fever and ague, except Fletcher,
Allegra, and my_sen_ (as we used to say in Nottinghamshire), and
the horses, and Mutz, and Moretto. In the beginning of November,
perhaps sooner, I expect to have the pleasure of seeing you. To-day
I got drenched by a thunder-storm, and my horse and groom too, and
his horse all bemired up to the middle in a cross-road. It was
summer at noon, and at five we were bewintered; but the lightning
was sent perhaps to let us know that the summer was not yet over.
It is queer weather for the 27th October.
"Yours," &c.
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